Trotsky is forced to resign as head of the Red Army
Period: to
Animal Farm Russian Revolution
A terrorist attack by Bulgarian communists blows up the Cathedral of Sofia and kills 140 dignitaries
Thousands of people are killed in an uprising in Chechnya
Kamenev demands that Stalin be fired from the position of general secretary
Zinoviev and Kamenev form the "United Opposition" against Stalin, who forms an alliance Nikolai Bukharin and Alexei Rykov, while Trotsky remains neutral
Stalin launches a new persecution of kulaks (the second "peasant war") that causes more than one thousand riots in two years
The Soviet Union announces a plan of "mass collectivization" and The government begins an anti-religious campaign
Stalin calls for full collectivization and orders the persecution of "kulaks" (rich farmers), a campaign that will cause the deportation of 15 million peasants to the Arctic regions and the death of 6.5 million peasants
Work begins on the White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal (Belomorkanal), the first major project that employed forced labor (the 100,000 prisoners of the Belbaltlag camp)
Period: to
One million people in Kazakhstan die of famine (caused by forced collectivization), and two million emigrated (1.5 million to China and 500,000 to Central Asia)
Stalin orders that people be forbidden to leave the areas affected by the famine
Stalin's collaborator Sergey Kirov is assassinated and blame is placed on Trotsky, prompting Stalin to begin the "Great Terror" to annihilate the Communist Party's left and right wings, led respectively by Leon Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin
The Norilsk camp is set up to provide the labor force for a nickel production center in the Arctic Circle
The Soviet Union decides to send military aid and advisers (more than 2,000) to help the communists in Spain
Stalin launches a campaign against "deviationism" that leads to the arrest of thousands of intellectuals (including scientists such as Andrei Tupolev and Sergei Korolev and writers such as Isaac Babel and Osip Mandelstam)
Lavrenti Beria replaces Nikolai Ezhov as head of the secret police (NKVD), an event that ends the "Great Terror" (1.5 million people have been arrested in two years, 680 thousand have been executed, and more than 100 thousand have died in camps)
Stalin and Hitler sign a non-aggression pact including the partition of Poland (and assigns the Baltic states, Finland and Romania's Bessarabia to the Soviet Union)
Finland surrenders to the Soviet Union
Germany invades Russia (190 German divisions, 10 Romanian divisions, 9 Romanian and 4 Hungarian brigades) and immediately seizes the Baltic states
The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee is established
Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill meet at the Tehran Conference
The Soviet Union invades Yugoslavia
The Soviet Union attacks Japan in Manchuria, taking Sakhalin and the Kuril islands
